


You Thought The Lions Were Bad

by GoldStarGrl



Category: Veep
Genre: Angst, Anxiety Disorder, Backstory, Catholic Guilt, Gen, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-28
Updated: 2015-04-28
Packaged: 2018-03-26 05:38:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3839095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoldStarGrl/pseuds/GoldStarGrl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dan is seven when he learns the story of his name.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Thought The Lions Were Bad

**Author's Note:**

> This is for all my fellow lapsed Catholics out there.

It's always been there. 

Gnawing at the edges of his mind, circling his heart like a menacing animal, claws gently resting on his lungs, ready to clamp down, slice and squeeze the life out of him. 

The beady-eyed beasts. The terror. The panic. The vague but persisting guilt. It's ready to destroy him. 

All it takes is a little push. 

* * *

Dan is seven when he learns the story of his name. 

His sister Mary's is easy, one of the first people they learn about in Sunday School, so is his brother David. The mother of God and the sweet little boy who stood up to evil. Cut-and-dry good guys.

Daniel was thrown into a pit of hungry lions when he was found praying, not his king, but to God, his CCD teacher explained. But God's love protected him and he emerged unharmed. Dan sat up a little straighter at this, pleased that the other Daniel had broken the rules, been a little bit tougher than everyone else in the kingdom, and walked out clean. 

He could be like that. He would be smart and tough until he stopped getting stomaches during recess and could breath normal when he took a math test. God would save him. He could be like that, and he’d be fixed.

So he works too hard in school and plays too aggressively at soccer practice and starts plotting all the ways he’ll get out of upstate New York when he’s good enough.

* * *

When he’s sixteen he fails his road test. 

The man in the passenger seat tells him so. A stiff man in his thirties with an overshaven face tells him he can’t have his license because he didn’t properly parallel park.

“You kept hitting the curb.” He says exasperatedly, as if Dan is part of a worldwide conspiracy to ruin his life with slight tire wear.

They’ve only pulled a few feet into the DMV parking lot, but, without a word, Dan unbuckles and storms out, the front door hanging open. Mr. Stick-Up-His-Ass has to slam the gear shift into park before the car rolls into the street. 

“HEY! Hey, that was incredibly dangerous, what the hell is wrong with you?”

He stares down at his Converse as he speed walks away, ignoring both the instructor and his mother, who is waiting on a bench outside the blocky gray building, expectantly. A weird pressure is beating in the side of his neck.

“How did it go sweetheart?"

It’s one moment late in the afternoon in tenth grade, and he's failed his road test the Friday before he's taking the SATs for the fourth time and all at once, he can't stand up. 

His legs don't want to work, or they can't remember how, and he's slumped over on the curb a few feet in front of the DMV and no air is going in or out of his lungs. He lost. He couldn’t do it. He wasn't good enough. _He lost_.

"Dan? Danny honey, it's okay. Dad’ll take you out to practice, you can try again next weekend." His mother's voice must be something like soothing, but it's too distant and echo-y for him to tell. She must think he's about to cry.

He can't answer, because his vision is blurring and he can't feel his feet or his hands pressed against the concrete and no, he doesn't cry. Winners don't cry. He has to be a winner, that’s the only way to make this stop. To be good, be better than good, be the best, be the chosen one- 

"Danny? Look at me." Far off. Vague finger snaps in front of his eyes. The blurry world is starting to go dark. His chest feels like it's going to explode. There’s a rush of air around him and his head is on the sidewalk, somehow.

“DAN! Somebody call 911, my son just collapsed. Oh precious..."

He wakes up in a hospital bed and his mouth tastes like rotting death. He stares at the wooden crucifix hung on the opposite wall as he puts his clothes back on, berating himself. Guys like him do not have to go to the hospital. They're too special, too tough. Daniel beats the lions, not the other way around. It attacked him because he was a loser. That couldn't happen again. 

He tears the paper gown he cast off into pieces as he impatiently waits for the discharge papers to be signed. He watches the doctor’s quick and messy note in a box near the top of the page.

_Reason for Admission: Severe panic attack_

His parents tell him he can take a few days off of school and he refuses. A doctor gives him a bottle of blue anti-anxiety pills and he pours the whole thing down the toilet at a gas station bathroom on the way home, already running over Latin prefixes for his test tomorrow in his mind.

_**in** \- not_

_**indissolubilem** \- not breakable _

_**invictus** \- not stoppable_

**_infirmum_** \- _not well_  

* * *

He keeps the beasts at bay for nineteen years and seven months after that.

Drinking too much, having dirty and emotionless sex several times a week, working on his phone until the glow of the screen makes his eyes smart. Keeping himself from engaging too fully in the word that inexplicably terrifies him. Convincing himself that this is important work, that he’s cleared all the sin and hope and bits of soul out of him so that he can be a vessel for the important work.

That he's safe. That he can't be touched by the darkness if he doesn't keep any light inside of him to tempt it.

* * *

There are two things the Catholic church always leaves out of Daniel’s story. 

He worked for the government. He was close to the king, and very good at his job.

After he was freed, he stood by while all the men who imprisoned him, as well as their wives and children, were thrown to the lions. He stood by while the King threw them under the bus and watched them die.

They never mention how he felt about that.

* * *

He's back in the pit, naturally. 

It's in a hospital bed across an ocean from Syracuse, New York and a beautiful woman is holding his back up Blackberry and telling him to drink water and he's thirty-five years old and he works at the White House, but it's the same thing. 

Still dark, still trapped. Maybe he never got out. Maybe he never will.

* * *

He misses a ride back on Air Force 2 and has to buy a coach ticket back home on a weird skinny British jet. 

The doctor gave him red anti-anxiety pills. When the lights go down, everyone around him settling into sleep, he rolls the bottle back and forth in his hands, staring at it. 

He doesn’t want to take one. But he doesn’t think he can pour them down the tiny airplane toilet. He pushes it deep, deep into his carry-on, between his iPads and balled up socks where no one could see it.

The groan of the engine is loud. Dan looks down through the clouds at the dark, nondescript Atlantic Ocean that surrounds the tiny tin funnel on every side for miles and miles and miles.

Without thinking, he presses his hand against the small oval window, feeling the cold condensation and thinking about those Sunday School classes, oh so long ago. 

Winners don’t cry. 

But he’s not a winner anymore. 

He lets his eyes grow hot and wet and red in the last row of an international jet. Just for five minutes. After that he has to come up with a game plan. But right now, for three hundred seconds, he’s seven and his God abandoned him.

Daniel left for dead in the lion's den.

He doesn’t know how to climb out.


End file.
